


Not impossible, improbable

by spatialvoid



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: 2013 Xmas The Time of the Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 01:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spatialvoid/pseuds/spatialvoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara spends the week after Christmas trying to forget, trying to convince herself that if the Doctor ever comes back he’ll still be the bow-tie-wearing friendly face with the big sad eyes that she knew and loved so well.<br/>It doesn’t work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not impossible, improbable

I.

It’s still Christmas for Clara when she walks into the TARDIS and finds the Doctor to be young again.  His face is glowing with youth, but she can see it in those big, sad eyes of his – his hearts are breaking for her, for the future, and _she knows._   She always knows.  He’s going to change, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.  She tries to breathe, stay calm, but she’s teary-eyed at the thought of a stranger piloting the TARDIS, traveling with her on Wednesdays, taking her for cocktails on the moon.

Two terrific speeches, a hallucination, and a sneeze later, he’s standing in front of her again.  He’s got gray hair and piercing blue eyes that seem to penetrate everything in their path and he’s talking about how he doesn’t like the color of his new kidneys and they’re probably crashing.

“Just one question,” he says, and he’s talking with his entire mouth and jaw, gesticulating wildly, “Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?”

She stares at him, terrified because she can’t remember a lick of what the Doctor (same man, she reminds herself) told her.  All of a sudden, it comes to her, like a flashing neon sign in the dark.  She lunges for the stabilizers and the TARDIS straightens as she does, begins to glide smoothly through the time vortex.

“Thank you,” he says, and he looks at her gratefully, but also like she’s a stranger. 

“Who am I?”  He asks her, and he looks more frightened than she is.  “I can’t remember, it’s all sort of mixed up in here.”  He taps the side of his head.

“You’re the Doctor,” she says, and there’s a single tear running down her cheek.

He frowns, oblivious.  “The Doctor?  Doctor who?”

II.

The TARDIS somehow manages to bring them back to Clara’s flat without the Doctor or Clara having touched anything besides the stabilizers, and Clara has never felt more confused or _strange._

The Doctor opens the doors when they land and looks out, sighing.  “I suppose you’ll be leaving now.”

He’s starting to remember who he was, who she is, and doesn’t question when she replies by saying: “I suppose I am.”

She runs up the stairs to her flat and throws open the door, choking back a sob.  Everyone has gone, there’s a note on the table from her dad saying that he and Linda did the dishes and were sorry they didn’t get to say goodbye.   She begins to cry, and she sits down on the sofa and buries her face in her hands as the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing fills the air.

III.

Clara spends the week after Christmas trying to forget, trying to convince herself that if the Doctor ever comes back he’ll still be the bow-tie-wearing friendly face with the big sad eyes that she knew and loved so well.

It doesn’t work.

The Doctor shows up on her doorstep the Wednesday after, on New Years’ Day, and finds her sitting on the sofa wearing sweatpants and an old t-shirt, marathon-watching Audrey Hepburn films and trying not to cry.  Clara looks at him as he stands in the doorway, two or three feet in front of her, and begins to cry.  He’s slicked the unruly gray hair into submission and ditched the purple coat and she realizes, once and for all, that she’s never going to see Chin-boy again.

“Dearest Clara,” the Doctor says gently as she cries, “I’m so sorry.”

IV.

They end up in Victorian London with the Paternoster Gang, and Clara keeps her distance from the Doctor, standing close by Jenny as they navigate an alien-laced mystery.  She catches the Doctor staring at her more than once, but refuses to meet his glare.

At one point, in the midst of a raging fight with quite a lot of clockwork droids, Jenny turns to her and asks with a questioning brow, “Is everything all right between you two?”

Clara simply sighs and shakes her head, turning back to the matter at hand.

When they’ve finished helping the gang and the TARDIS is drifting through the time vortex, the Doctor disappears into the depths of the ship without a word and Clara falls less-than-gracefully onto the jump seat to have a good cry.

He finds her a couple of hours later in the library, curled up on a worn sofa with a book.  She slams it shut when she sees him, and he smiles when he sees the title. 

“Good old J.K.,” he says softly, and this time Clara meets his eyes. 

“Why did you have to change?”  She asks him, quietly and coldly, after a moment of eye contact.

He looks at her for a moment before speaking.  “I didn’t want to have to die.”

They are silent after that.

V.

He keeps coming back on Wednesdays, and she doesn’t stop him.  They save cities and planets and solar systems.  At the end of every Wednesday, the Doctor simply tips his hat, smiles, and strolls back into the TARDIS while Clara walks up to her flat.   It’s eight Wednesdays before she drags him up the stairs to have a cup of tea before he leaves (like the old days), but he doesn’t mind.  He spent far too long with friends who waited for him – it’s high time he waited for them.

It’s six months after his face changed before it becomes Wednesdays _and_ Saturdays, and the Doctor takes extra time between visits because he wants to prolong his time with Clara as long as possible (“Everything ends, Clara, and sooner than you think.”).  Sometimes he’ll show up at her flat and it’ll have been months since he’s seen her, sometimes merely hours. 

“What a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey life you live,” Clara tells him with a laugh one day, and he grins.

“I know.”

VI.

It’s the middle of autumn when Clara gets a phone call. 

Strictly speaking, it’s from the Doctor – but not hers.  This is from the first Doctor she met, all floppy hair and bow tie and flirtatiousness. 

“Hello Clara!”  He says, falsely cheerful, and she cringes.  “I thought I’d give you a call, I know it’s Wednesday but I just wanted-“

She hangs up on him.  Sets her phone down on the coffee table and stares at the wall.  She wasn’t expecting this, and somehow, the old voice and mannerisms and ways have lost their charm and she finds herself wishing that the Doctor was there.  _Her Doctor._

Not much later, her Doctor walks through the front door with a grin.

“Hello, Clara!  How goes the day?”  

Clara throws her head back and laughs, at the sight of him, at the question, at her answer.  “Do you happen to remember that time I hung up on you?

The Doctor smiles a little at first, and then breaks out into a grin.  “We never talked about it.”

“I know, but do you remember?”

He looks at her, puzzled.  “Of course.  I always remember.”

“You got your times a bit mixed up.”

“That happened for you _today_?”

Clara smiles.  “Yes.”

He frowns.  “And what’d you mean, hanging up on me like that?”

“I didn’t want to hear that voice.”

The Doctor tilts his head to the side and looks at her in wonder.  “Why ever not?”

Clara looks at him fondly and smiles.  “I wanted it to be you.  This you.” 

The Doctor quirks his head and all of a sudden, Clara  _knows_.  

She's not impossible, she's improbable.

**Author's Note:**

> Section IV is inspired by bits and pieces that I've seen about Series 8 on Twitter (the #dwsr hashtag).


End file.
